Dalibor Topic wrote:
So, in other words, you CANNOT interpret the text of this FAQ as an exception to the GPL. This FAQ is in now way legally binding, and it has not even been written by its copyright holder(s) [or, more precisely, agreed upon by all of them].None of the the things you are trying to assert are legally binding either, as you are no copyright holder of Kaffe. No copyright holder of Kaffe has ever attacked Debian or another distribution with bogus copyright claims.What's your point again?
My point was precisely that the document you referred to, cannot be used as a basis to represent all of Kaffe's copyright holders opinion.
In a related matter, and given you insistence as "representing" Kaffe's copyright holders on the interpretation of the terms of the GNU GPL, could you show us a signed proxy(?) by all of Kaffe copyright holders, to speak in they name. More precisely, in law terms, are you "a duly authorized agent" of all Kaffe's copyright holders?
Do you have any proof of a copyright holder on Kaffe enforcing this bogus interpretation of the GPL of yours on anyone or is this all based on hearsay?
Why do you claim that the interpretation is "bogus"? You have made no proof to that effect.
Are you implying that the Debian project should publish works without caring about license terms, until somebody sues Debian? As far as I can tell, this has not been the traditional approach of debian-legal; on the contrary, debian-legal's tradition has been to study license terms and to come up to a consensus as to whether they correspond to the project's criteria or not, and to minimize the risks of being sued, independently of who the copyright holder was.
Irrelevant to this discussion, as a program using standard Java interfaces is not automatically a derived work from Kaffe, not matter how you try to twist it.
Where did you see this in the Copyright law? You are simply asserting your beliefs, not the text of law. I did base all my assertion on the text of law and the text of the GNU GPL. Please do not *only* cite US court decisions as the single basis for your claims, as they have no bearing in Canada and many other countries in which Debian is distributed. Even though I only showed the Canadian law text, given the existing international conventions, it is quite likely that the laws in US and many other countries are very similar to the one I have shown.
Andrew Suffield quite effectively debunked your 'Kaffe's GPld portions of class library library automatically infect everything Java application they touch' nonsense in November 2003 already right here on debian-legal.
As far as I know, law and licenses have precedence over Andrew Suffield opinions, even though I do greatly respect his insight in licensing issues. So, please address specific issues in the text of law and in the license text, and stop asserting that your or anybody's opinion as a definitive interpretation of the GPL.
Etienne -- Etienne M. Gagnon, Ph.D. http://www.info2.uqam.ca/~egagnon/ SableVM: http://www.sablevm.org/ SableCC: http://www.sablecc.org/
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